Industry news

The UK’s Royal Mail Group has signed a contract with CSC to provide cloud computing information technology (IT) services. The new contract is an expansion of a previous contract signed in 2003 with CSC to maintain the Royal Mail Group's desktop computers and manage and develop its servers, mainframes and IT processes.

The contract is the first cloud computing services agreement of this scale. Under the terms of the agreement, CSC will provide Royal Mail Group’s 30,000 employees with access to new IT services from Microsoft. CSC will also provide helpdesk support.

Royal Mail Group's Head of Technology Service Delivery, Carol Olney, commented: “This deal forms part of Royal Mail's drive to invest in new technology to improve efficiency and customer service.” She continued, “The Microsoft suite will give people across Royal Mail Group the tools they need to do their jobs more effectively, enabling our business units to collaborate with each other, partners and other external organisations more freely, easily and securely while securing cost savings."

Mitie, a support services and asset management firm, has posted a rise in profits in the six months to September 30 and said efficiency drives in the private and public sector will create further opportunities for growth in the next year.

Mitie, whose services include roofing, catering and painting, saw pre-tax profits climb to £42.3m from £37.6m over the same period the previous year on revenues that rose to £801.1m from £760.7m.

Chief Executive Ruby McGregor-Smith commented: ‘In the private sector clients continue to seek efficiency through multi-service and integrated facilities management contracts while budgetary pressures in the public sector will create substantial facilities management outsourcing opportunities, although the timing of these is currently difficult to predict.'

Mitie explained that the government is expected to rely heavily on outsourcing in the coming period as it seeks to balance the budget following stimulus measures that were prompted by the economic crisis. The company anticipates considerable impetus in the public sector over the next two years as all public sector bodies will be challenged to maintain front line service delivery with reduced budgets.

The University of Ulster has signed an ITO contract with IBM to improve reporting, analysis and forward planning. The planned IT platform will help to provide staff with an overview of how the university is performing across most key areas, including dropout rates, the percentage of students getting a good degree result, student retention by course and university expenditure.

In a statement the company said “Universities are facing more pressures today than ever before. There are more quality higher education institutions for prospective students to choose from, leading to increased competition for student applications. At the same time, there are new financial pressures as the Government cuts higher education funding.”

Patrick McLaughlin, database development manager at the University of Ulster commented: “We have always been committed to ensuring that our students have the best education experience possible, while attracting a high numbers of applications. But it is impossible for a university of our size to do this if it doesn’t have an accurate overview of what does and doesn’t work, and understand the best path to take for the future.”

Apparently Indian outsourcing suppliers are finding Europe a tough nut to crack. Compared to the U.S and North America, Continental Europe has not adapted the outsourcing models provided by Indian IT suppliers, according to research conducted by Forrester. So the Indian outsourcing giants are fallible.

That is not to say that Europe does not outsource, it just doesn’t seem to be outsourcing to Indian. However, the Round-Up does not think this will last for long. With all the news about the state of public sector outsourcing and budget cuts, it will be almost impossible to bypass the offerings in India. Just this week the news room has had an abundance of public sector ITO contract announcements.

For instance, the Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust has signed a contract with Kainos. Kainos is a IT consulting company and the contract will help manage the large amounts of paper based notes that are processed. It’s all going electronic now.

Universities are also getting in on the act. The University of Ulster has announced that it has signed an ITO contract with IBM. The IT overhaul that IBM will manage will enable staff to see a more comprehensive overview of the university’s performance matrix. The statement released by IBM confirmed that financial pressures on Universities have made outsourcing a more viable process to procure.

A short and sweet round up this week, it seems the run up to Christmas has seen a slow down in new contract news. Mark the Round-Up’s word, this will not last long.

By Dr Roger Newman, UK head of manufacturing and digital convergence relationship management at Mahindra Satyam

At many of the leading offshore, outsourcing companies the problem is not one of access to raw talent, we have quality IT graduates in abundance, the challenge is in converting that raw talent into somebody who can shine in any global IT organisation.

Over the past few years companies in India have invested heavily in training and HR processes. In our company there is a recognition that the ability to convert raw talent into ‘stars’ is a real competitive advantage. For example our Leadership school has world class facilities and trainers; recently I was showing off these facilities to a customer and he was amazed to see our staff training to work on his account, going through a business simulation game using his industry and his specific processes as part of the simulation. In many ways we are able to train staff better than our customers because of the investments made and the low cost base we operate in.

However for all these facilities and processes we are still not where we need to be in terms of talent management. In fact there is a growing realization that to take things to the next level we have to overcome more subtle, human barriers.

To really develop your ‘stars’ of the future you need people who will spend time mentoring them. Having a mentoring programme is not enough, you need your top managers to give up quality time, not easy at the best of times. You also need to give people broad experience and opportunity. If you have a potential star in your division it is difficult to give them up to another division to let them get broader experience. It is amazing how selfish I become when it comes to talent!

In India there is also a cultural tendency to be fairly hierarchical and demonstrate loyalty up and down the chain of command. There are many benefits from a service delivery perspective but can make it difficult to fast track people through the organisation. This has to be recognized and dealt with.

So, the outsourcing talent management race is very much on. Great strides have been made and there is a realistic assessment of the barriers still to be overcome. The prize will go to those companies that stick with it in the long run.

The UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has signed a three-year extension to an existing ten-year agreement with IBM to help transform the way in which it delivers services to customers.

As part of the contract IBM will be responsible for the development and implementation of a range of business transformation and systems integration projects. IBM will also be responsible for DVLA's technical infrastructure and its ongoing operation, maintenance and support. A key element of the contract will be to deliver a robust and flexible IT architecture that will support a move to emerging cross-government architectures and further improve service quality and the customer experience.

Paul Evans, DVLA’s Chief Information Officer, added, “This agreement offers significant savings for DVLA and we look forward to building on the partnership that has already been responsible for a wide range of innovative projects.”

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Nigerian Contact Centre Market, finds that the market earned revenues of $8.29 million in 2008 and estimates this to grow more than tenfold by 2015 to reach $114.45 million. The application segments covered in this analysis are vendors and system integrators.

Despite industry challenges, the rising consumer demand from developing industry sectors will drive exponential growth in the Nigerian contact centre market. The outsourced contact centre segment, email and SMS services, the health and medical organisation (HMO) and the public sectors are expected to become key areas of market growth from 2009 to 2015.

Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst, Jiaqi Sun, explained; "Nigeria is an emerging economy and the most populous country in Africa. The booming telecommunications and banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sectors are driving the demand for contact centre services, while competitive labour cost structures are attracting offshore operations."

Frost & Sullivan anticipates that the government will introduce incentives and regulatory frameworks by 2013. This will also coincide with improvements in infrastructure that will boost the market.

The main challenges faced by market participants include a poor telecommunications infrastructure and limited commercial power supply. Moreover, there is no specific industry association to regulate the market.

"The limited availability of commercial power supply increases operational costs," explains Sun. "Insufficient bandwidth also inhibits the growth of contact centre services. The key factors to succeed in this market include enhancing the quality of customer services, seeking alternative means of power supply, and initiating employee training programmes."

Nigerian Contact Centre Market is part of the Contact Centres Growth Partnership Services programme, which also includes research in the following markets: South African Contact Centre Technology Market, South African Broadband Market Update, Angolan Broadband Market, and Nigerian IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Market. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.

The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust has signed a contract with Kainos, an IT consulting company, to deliver its document and record management using electronic documentation technology.

The contract with Kainos has been set-up to address the unmanageable quantity of paper based case notes that must be processed and stored. The Trust currently has more than half a million case notes both on and off-site and it operates across a 45-acre site. The retrieval and management of notes so that they are with the right clinician in the right department at the right time, has traditionally proved time consuming and complex.

As part of the contract Kainos will establish a high-end scanning operation on the Trust site. The scanning operation will be managed by Trust staff and will enable the scanning of case notes required for clinic appointments and also case notes for all new patients. The scanning operation has been developed to allow the bulk scanning of an initial high priority 40,000 existing patient case notes. Back scanning of existing case notes on the Trust premises removes any concerns around patient confidentiality, which could potentially arise with offsite scanning.

The Kainos contract will also aid the Ipswich NHS Trust in compliance with upcoming sector rules. Next year for example, electronic production and transmission of discharge summaries within 24 hours becomes mandatory and is a key target for all NHS Trusts from April 2010.

Neil Turnbull, Head of Programme Delivery, in the Information Management and Technology department of The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust commented: “At the time we were selecting a partner to implement our Electronic Document & Records Management (EDRM) system, Kainos demonstrated a deep understanding of EDRM technologies and processes and their experience in managing large-scale projects was evident to everyone who met them.” He continued, “They know EDRM technology, systems and services and we understand healthcare and patient care. Blending these skills and knowledge bases is making for a very successful outcome.”

Unitech Wireless has signed a five-year contract with India based, Genpact, in an effort to provide multiple customer service solutions throughout the North of India.

Under the contract, Genpact will deploy customer service solutions for Unitech Wireless through its operations center in Jaipur, which also supports over ten global enterprises.

Unitech Wireless is the joint venture company of Unitech Ltd. and Norway based mobile services provider Telenor Group. Through outsourcing its customer relations services to Genpact, the company hopes to create a strong differentiating factor from its competitors.

David Meneghello, Executive Vice-President of Marketing comments, “Outsourcing of equipment, services, backend technology and processes has allowed us to do this differently from others – turn around and face outwards, towards the customer, from day one. With Genpact as our partner, we will build the quality of customer service as our strongest differentiator in this competitive market.”

Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md, has subcontracted CSC to provide data capture centre support for the U.S. Census Bureau. The subcontract has a 15-month performance period and an estimated total contract value of $75 million.

Under the terms of the contract, CSC will operate the Baltimore Data Capture Centre to capture data for the U.S. Census Bureau. The centre's employees will process more than 65 million forms that are mailed directly from households or collected and sent by local offices for the 2010 Census. CSC and its subcontractors expect to hire approximately 2,500 contract employees to staff functional areas of the facility including warehousing, sorter/scanner operations, document preparation, keying from image and checkout.

The 2010 Census is a count of everyone living in the United States and is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Census data is used to guide the distribution of more than $400 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year. The information is also used to determine Congressional apportionment and to help guide planning decisions, such as the placement of schools, hospitals, transportation, and business and industrial development.